


Only If They Don’t Have A Soul

by softcorevulcan



Series: A part of the world [5]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Illyria Character Study, Morality, Slice of Life, Souls, Wesley has Anxiety, mentions of Wesley pining after Angel in the past (if you squint)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 08:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17556665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softcorevulcan/pseuds/softcorevulcan
Summary: Wesley and Illyria sit on a bench, watching over the house they're supposed to be keeping safe, and discuss the morality of killing something with a soul. They argue over whether Illyria should make the choice of who lives and dies.Or, Wesley realizes he really cares quite a lot about keeping Illyria alive and free of the weight of new mistakes. And Illyria shows she's starting to care a bit, too.Takes place in the same timeline as "Being in This World."





	Only If They Don’t Have A Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to Memories by Thutmose (Into the Spider-Verse has incredible music) while writing this, if anyone wants some nice background music to read to. I loved that movie's entire soundtrack.

“No killing.”

“Only if they don’t have a soul,” Illyria responds. 

“Correct.” It was… somewhat simplifying the matter, but that conclusion would suffice for now.

“So killing me would be acceptable, then.” Illyria just always had to go and do this. Make things difficult.

“We don’t know if you have a soul. But of course we don’t want you to die.”

“Yes you do. Often.”

“Sometimes,” he allowed, after a pause. ”And - not much, anymore. Not seriously. You know that.” Wesley lets himself sag against the bench they’re sitting on. Their arms are touching. Just resting beside each other. As if this were any two normal set of humans, maybe family members out for a relaxing moment on the porch, or comfortable partners used enough to each other to no longer get those nervous goosebumps and butterflies. Ha. “I promised. No one is going to kill you, Illyria. I won’t let them. I won’t -”

He didn’t have to finish. She knows, and besides, that isn’t really what she wants convincing of, he thinks. “I did not mean to start conflict with you. I know you and the others are allies. I know I am not under threat. I just meant - creatures like me, they are considered expendable, aren’t they? Their deaths are not considered regrettable to you.”

Wesley does not hear crickets - although there are a few blinking fireflies at the edge of the yard, flickering in the darkness under the trees. There are no rustles in the grass or the plants, except for the wind. Perhaps the things that are alive - or undead - can sense Illyria’s presence. Some instinct, guiding them to just not stir the beast that might be near.

She doesn’t feel like a god-king, an abomination, a destroyer of worlds, sitting next to him right now. Her presence just feels like a woman. A person, just like him, a body too-still in the cold outside, deep in her thoughts. Yes, her skin is a little cold, like the leather of a car seat, as it rests against him, but otherwise there’s nothing too obtrusively out of place. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that they were just two nobodies out here. Maybe -

No monsters, no gods, Somewhere in some alternate universe where people like Fred didn’t burn up from the inside because magic wouldn’t be real, and things like Illyria would only be nightmares. 

He goes for practicality. “If you meet a creature similar to yourself, you may destroy it if the necessity presents itself. If you wish.”   


“You do not know the correct answer, do you Wesley?” She’s asking something that hasn’t been voiced, he’s not sure if he picked up on what he was meant to. Their communication is always like this - imperfect - because the more broken parts of themselves keep blaming, all the while keep hoping somehow this enemy, each other, will read their mind and intuit what the real issues are. Wesley isn’t really sure if Illyria ever could read minds, and he doesn’t want to ask - and if she could, she probably can’t anymore. 

“Humans aren’t perfect. I know there isn’t any perfect answer I can give you, on morality.”  Her hands are clasped in her lap, a mirror of his own posture, their forearms still touching, leaning against each other. It would be like a human, if Illyria wasn’t so very still. Just a touch too close to eerie for Wesley to really lie to himself. “It seems like the longer we’re alive, the murkier that answer becomes. There was a time when I would have rather died than work for a vampire, and now -”

“Now you place your faith entirely upon one. One that has threatened your life. One that has killed others.”

“Well, yes.” 

He wishes he could just leave it at that. Leave it at Illyria spelling out what would’ve been his crimes several years ago, what are in an entirely new way still sort of a list of his failings, and just let her draw the conclusion of his faults at that. She seems to enjoy supporting that depiction of him - that he is wrong. Wesley thinks, it makes her feel like she is more in control, having someone to blame, for what happened to her.

He knows she feels powerless. Always more. They already killed the only person who could be charged with direct responsibility. Now all the blame is peripheral - Wesley’s fault, Charles’ fault, Angel’s - all for ever letting Fred and themselves anywhere near Wolfram & Hart. But Illyria - from her perspective, it’s all chaotic thrashes, it’s worshipers unworthy of her forcing her into this prison, it’s the universe pulling her apart because she doesn’t fit, threatening to destroy her. It’s the only way for her to stay alive, decimating her and swallowing up her strength piece by piece, condemning her to be less and less everyday. It’s Wesley telling her she deserved it, when she first awoke here. Wesley yelling at her for days on end, trying to hurt her and nothing working, 

He should not have done those things. He eventually realized that, at least sober. He put himself to work making the best of the situation - although best probably didn’t belong anywhere near this. Rather, there was no point, unless Illyria survived. All of it was for nothing if she died, if she took the world with her when she did. All of this misery couldn’t - couldn’t conclude with more of it. They had to try to make something better out of it.

They had to. 

“Humans are a contradictory species.”

“They certainly are.” The sun has completely set now, the trees still gently moving in the breeze. They can hear the front door of the house thrown open now - Faith leaving for patrol  - haphazard and loud and probably tipping off any vampire or demon thing nearby to shove off fast. Wesley wonders if any will bother scattering toward the house, instead. Illyria will eliminate them swiftly, near effortless, if any do. 

“There are times when it is appropriate, even necessary, to kill other humans.”  Illyria’s voice is as - not gentle, gentle is never the right word with her, but it’s close - as the wind. But Wesley would always be able to make out that voice. She doesn’t bother waiting, hoping for an answer. They’ve had this conversation enough times, mostly with Wesley drunk out of his mind or so anxious and angry - and guilty, always guilty - that he was blathering anyway. She doesn’t care what he has to say back. “But you are afraid I won’t be able to discern where to make that difference.”

Wesley takes a breath, grounds himself. He finds himself unclasping and re-clasping his fingers. “Eventually I - I want to trust you with that. You will be - in this work eventually that scenario will come up. But for now, just let the rest of us figure that out. You shouldn’t have to live with it, if you make a mistake.”

Illyria visibly tilts her head, as her whole body subtly turns toward Wesley. His eyes flicker up to meet hers. “A mistake?” 

There’s so much there. In the words they don’t say. She looks so much like the ghost - of a woman he never got to know, of maybe what Fred might have been like, before Pylea, before Wesley helped her plan a murder, before - 

Illyria looks like Illyria. All cold eyes, fathoms deep, staring in from another place, enraged and terrified and engulfing because she can never go back to that reality she had domain in. Something horribly off putting, overwhelmingly, quietly, out of place. He can’t look away from her. He can’t stop seeing it, all of it. 

But somehow, he still means it. The more Illyria settles into this world, the more she’ll get it too. 

“I have killed. I know how to make such decisions, though my conclusions may come out differently than yours.” She is thinking about how she might kill a threat Angel would perhaps spare, how the instability of her new existence causes precaution and egotism in the same breath.  

 

\---  
  


A month ago, Angel let a witch go, a witch that quite possibly had the means to kill a human without batting an eyelash - upon which seeing, Illyria had glanced from Gunn on the ground, thrown by a spell, and Wesley clutching his slashed arm and torso, and then moved to destroy. 

Angel had told her no, which she hadn’t cared about in the slightest. And Wesley had thrown himself forward and grabbed her with both arms, pain be damned, pleading her to pause. Illyria might have made the call to kill that human. But the human was deemed acceptable, and Angel simply spoke to the girl, and she’d made promises, just words. And they’d all let her go. Illyria had raged at Wesley for five nights after, each time they arrived home alone, making a point of grabbing his injury when he tried to defend Angel’s decision. 

Wesley had snapped, towards the end of the tirades, at three in the morning, backing up from Illyria as she practically ran him into the wall. He was clutching the arm, he remembers, because he was afraid she’d throw him with it. “Of course I might have made a different decision! But I sided with Angel! If he thinks that - that kid -” Wesley had tried to temper himself, to balance out the escalation Illyria added to the room, “is redeemable, then I am going to support that. That’s all I can do. Sometimes the harsh call isn’t the right one. We aren’t at war. It wasn’t necessary to eliminate them. They didn’t mean any -”

“What if they did? What if they intended destruction? What if they are like the human who raised me, with violent intentions? They could return, and seek to kill their undoers.” You - she didn’t say, didn’t add. She didn’t need to. 

“Then we’ll find out, if we have to take care of them again.”

“And then -”

“Then we might have to kill them.”

That had settled that.

 

\---

 

“Until you become something less like the things we are supposed to hunt, I don’t want you making those decisions.” 

“Because you are afraid I will make the wrong one.” Her head straightened. After a moment, it was as if invisible hackles raised. She pulled her skin away from his. They were still sitting, but she was poised to spring now. “Because then you will let them kill me. Allow them to kill me. If it’s not the choice he would make.”

“I know Angel is flawed, Illyria.” Wesley knew he was showing his nerves too, voice just a bit too invested, a little too close to turning to something louder, angrier. “I know that. I-”

“Then why side with him. When he is-”

“I won’t.” Wesley took another deep, measured breath, calming himself down. “I won’t side with him, if it’s the wrong choice. I didn’t let him hurt you, and I won’t.” 

There was still a tension, like lightning in the air, but Illyria made herself soften, slouching infinitesimally, until her and Wesley were touching again, thighs gently bumping. Their hands resting against each other. Wesley let himself grab hers and hold them, taking it as a positive sign that she let him. “I just don’t know you well enough yet - trust that you understand how this world works enough yet - to guarantee you that I would side with your choice. So, I’d rather you didn’t make those sorts of calls yet, when I know you’re capable of avoiding them.” 

“You think me a child.”

“No.”

“Then you are threatening to destroy me.”

Of course, she had to put it that way. He squeezed her hand. 

Wesley still wasn’t very good at reading the difference between Illyria ready to kill him, and her understanding where he was coming from. Maybe they were the same thing, on her. “I suppose. If you have to say it that way. I am saying that I will stop you, if you commit actions I determine are a threat to the world.”

“You have no special right to decide that, any more than I do.”

“No, I don’t. But someone has to.” Illyria was squeezing his hands back - firm, like a vice, but she was certainly putting special care into trying to make sure it didn’t feel like imprisonment, like control. He could slip away, if he wanted, it wasn’t a threat. Just what could’ve seemed like one, if this were someone else, someone who didn’t know the difference, the subtleties, when it came to Illyria. “I said I would handle your training, and this includes - includes this.”

“You don’t have the right.”

“I’m not saying -” It’s hard, with a watchers training, a whole life of being told he had to order a little girl to go die, and help in the disposal himself if she went rogue - that he had, in fact, been large part of the reason Faith broke as much as he did, because that training was all bullshit, was all cruelty and idiocy and there were so many levels to it he still hasn’t quite reconciled - to figure out how to navigate this. How to communicate to a god, that not only do you see them as just another person, but you also think you have the capacity to get rid of them. Not only that, the responsibility. What does a god know, to understand that? Does a god choose to kill it’s subjects, it’s creations, if they disobey? Did Illyria? Did gods ever do it to each other? Certainly, humans rarely did it to gods. There really wasn’t a justification, either. Just the knowledge that he would do it. If he had to, he’d die doing it. If she ever did become the monster. Just like he’d kill Angel, if it really, truly, had to come down to it.

Just like Angel, Wesley wonders how much leeway he’d actually give Illyria to commit evil and have the time to try and redeem herself. By all merits, Angel has done enough harm - even before Wesley showed up - to warrant ending him. Depending on how prophecies play out, the world might even be better off if Angel isn’t in it to possibly trigger Armageddon. But here he was, supporting the man who abandoned him, still ready to march into hell or anything else, if Angel needed him to. 

Wesley has the distinct suspicion that Illyria can tell there’s some hypocrisy there, some imbalance, that it’s unfair she has such a higher moral bar to meet, than a lowly vampire who’s already certainly crossed it more than once. But then - Wesley doesn’t judge Angel by Angelus, and he’s resolute to not condemn Illyria, anymore, for what she’s done before this new phase of her life. Before Wesley can even move his lips, to stupidly, hilariously, ponder that ‘life isn’t fair’, Illyria hisses. 

Then she draws up, legs coming onto the bench, pressing Wesley away like he’s nothing - but still gentle , easing him over to his side, when he knows she could have kicked him straight into the trees. Her arms curling around her, like iron bars, shields, staring at him, furious. 

“You hate me, don’t you?”

“Of course,” she replies simply, voice steady, heavy, cold. 

It sounds like impending murder, but then, she’s been so gentle - for her - so Wesley bets on being able to breathe until tomorrow morning. She has sounded madder, lashed out harder. This is nothing. 

“Because I'm a hypocrite, and a monster, and entitled, and unworthy, and all those other things you like to remind me.” 

Illyria flashes her eyes away from him, quickly, just for an instant, to glower into the trees. Then she’s flashing them back, done with her reprieve. “You are unbearable.”

“Well, would you like me to handle the rest of guard duty alone? I’d be happy to -”

“Shut up.” He does. She hates it when he gets snarky. Which is quite often, around her. Maybe she hates it, he isn’t sure. He’s never really sure of anything, around her. 

Wesley’s taking a fresh heaping of deadly risks hourly, if he’s being honest with himself, by keeping Illyria alive. By not treating her as an active threat, which part of him desperately wishes he would. But - it’s not like it’d do any good, make any difference, right any wrongs. He couldn’t -  “I’m sorry." 

Illyria just keeps staring into him, every so often letting her eyes flick away, to scan the area for threats, before returning, relentless. Wesley lets himself stretch out again, on his side of the bench, from the huddling he’d done in response to her tenseness, deciding he’ll pretend she isn’t there. 

Eventually, Illyria moves to some semblance of mirroring Wesley, turning the front of her body back toward the yard, placing her feet back on the ground and digging one of her hands into the armrest of the bench. Wesley can hear the wood creak and splinter a bit as she grasps it. 

“I will not kill anything with a soul, for now.”

 


End file.
